[Beliefnet, September 28, 2000] Observers of the abortion debate disagree about nearly every topic, but for the last decade, one prediction has won pretty near consensus: when RU 486 arrives, it will change everything. Now that the FDA has approved the “abortion pill,” we'll get our first experience of an all-chemical abortion--what some pro-lifers call a “human pesticide.” Previous methods involved a direct surgical removal of the child, but RU 486 will be an inside job.

[Citizen, July 2000] She wrapped her baby boy in a crib bedsheet covered with tiny balls and bats. He wore an angel necklace and a felt diaper. Carefully she laid him where someone was sure to find him, near a parked car, 200 feet from the entrance to the Indianapolis Community Hospital.

[Beliefnet, February 1, 2000] You have to imagine, first, the seven babies curled and fitted around each other like puppies in a basket. Each has his or her separate water-filled sac, and within these sacs they rest or exercise, sometimes jostling their neighbors.

[Beliefnet, January 24, 2000] When I saw the pink earplugs in his hand, I felt older than I’ve ever felt in my life. I had been invited to be a speaker at an all-day rock concert, and the host had warned me in a prior e-mail that the groups following me would be pretty loud. The afternoon bands, I was told, were “kind of mellow -- my mom likes these bands.” (Reading that sentence was the second oldest I’ve felt.) But “the bands at night are hardcore, which is very loud and the lyrics are basically screamed out.”

[Focus on the Family, January 2000] Susan B. Anthony is a hero of the feminist movement, and with good cause; she was a trailblazer in the women's movement of the late 1800's. A Quaker who never married, Anthony devoted her energy

[Christianity Today, April 7, 1997] In his darkened office Pastor Stan put his head in his hands. It had been a difficult phone call, and Marcia was beginning to cry when he hung up. The baby, in the background, was already crying. Usually, the baptism of a baby is a joyful part of the Sunday service, but this time Pastor Stan had said no. Marcia wasn't married, so he had told her it would be a private ceremony. To put her and her baby up in front of everybody, as if it were the same as any other family, just seemed wrong. The church would be practicing make-believe morality, looking the other way. It would mean pretending sin wasn't wrapped all around this situation.

[Human Life Review, Spring 1993] “Are you sure?” The question caught me off guard. I had been rattling on to my friend Mark Crutcher about the terrible abortion law just passed by the Maryland legislature, the appalling anti-woman provisions, the consternation of the pro-life community, and had wound up with the assertion that we wanted to bring it to referendum.

[Sisterlife, Spring 1991] The abortion debate stands or falls on a single question: is the unborn a person? One would not necessarily know this from the great heat and little light that usually surround the issue, as pro-lifers target additional social ills caused by abortion license, and abortion defenders charge that pro-lifers only want to punish women for sexual activity, or keep them pregnant and out of the workforce. But so much passion would not arise if the issue were not literally a matter of life and death. In the Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that if the “suggestion of personhood [of the unborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” Thus, the personhood of the unborn child is the single point on which the entire debate turns.

[Washington Post, July 28, 1997] I was pro-choice at one point in my life, but I came over to a pro-life position years ago. I've been there ever since. Perhaps because of my background, I think there's a logic to the pro-choice position that deserves respect, even as we engage it critically. It is possible to disagree with somebody without calling them baby-killers, without believing that they are monsters or fiends. It is possible to disagree in an agreeable way. The abortion argument is essentially an argument among women. It's been a bitter and ugly debate, and I find that embarrassing. For me, that gives a special urgency to this conference.